Houghton LNAB question

Question

With Richard Hougton,1st Baronet Hoghton of Hoghton Tower, the LNAB is with a 'u' (Houghton), but the later descendants seem to switch to the spelling without a u (Hoghton), noting that in 1835 Sir Henry Hoghton changed his name to Bold-Hoghton and his son changed the surname to De Hoghton. (See the Complete Baronetage link)

I think his descendants LNAB should be 'Hoghton' up to the 8th Baronet's family but I wasn't sure what to do with Richard (or his father).

Note the supposed descendants of Richard's son Ratcliffe in America who use the 'u' spelling almost exclusively.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=3MxKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA10 Complete Baronetcy, p. 10-12]

Comments

I worked on this some more - there's actually three major shifts in the line to the Emigrant ancestors from the Baronets:

• Thomas Houghton-156, now disconnected from his parents
• Edward Houghton-167, who mysteriously moves to Devonshire
• John Houghton-144 who mysteriously moves from Devonshire to Bedfordshire. No indication he lived in a manor but apparently he or a descendant owned a sword with the Coat of Arms of the Hoghtons of Hoghton Tower.

I looked at the manors in both towns (Tavistock, Devon and Eaton Bray, Bedfordshire) and #2 and #3 don't appear to be lords of any manors, which is quite a drop down the ladder from the Baronets family who owned a lot of property. Many of the Lancaster family members were secret Catholics, I thought maybe that was part of the story of the moves or something to do with the Earls of Bedford, although moving to Puritan Massachusetts indicates they weren't Catholic. There's a manor of Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire close to Eaton which would sort of explain the spelling change.